Asparagus with Integrity

Although what sous vide cooking does for meat, poultry, or fish is the stuff of legend, elevating the ordinary to the sublime, you might be surprised at what it can do for a humble vegetable. One of the benefits of sous vide cooking is that it amplifies the natural flavors in foods, so beets taste beetier and carrots more like carrots. This gentle and precise method brings out the best in whatever goes in the bag. Another bonus of this technique is the ability to fully cook vegetables without turning them to mush. The result is not so much a tender crispness, but an al dente tenderness that preserves their structure and integrity. But don’t take our word for it. Check out what Chicago Foodie has to say here.

4 Responses to Asparagus with Integrity

How about the recipe for the poached eggs and asparagus in the picture? Can’t tell what the sauce is but I still want to eat it.

From the SVS Team: It is delicious looking. We’ll see if we can get the sauce recipe up. As to a recipe for the poached, eggs, just your standard 147F/64C eggs poached in their shells on the floor of the water oven for 45 minutes to an hour and cracked onto sous vide cooked asparagus.

Looks great, but how do you cook the egg and asparagus in one Sous Vide machine (in my case the Demi), ie egg 55 minutes at 147F and the asparagus at 185F (say also at 55 minutes)?

Regards

In response: The photo is just illustrative of the wonderful things you can do with a sous vide perfect egg. You would not cook them simultaneously. However, if you were going to cook both, you would cook the asparagus first at 183F or so for about 30 minutes, drop the pouch into ice water, then cool the water bath and cook the egg for an hour. You could serve the egg over chilled asparagus or you could drop the asparagus pouch back into the machine in the last 10 minutes or so of the egg’s cooking time to rewarm.

The picture shows Asparagus with Bacon-Hazelnut Vinaigrette. Recipe is by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and is available on SeriousEats. Ingredients include bacon, hazelnuts, balsamic vinegar, EVOO, honey, and dijon mustard.

Hi Everyone,
While I appreciate and love the illustrative picture of the asparagus and poached egg, I’m willing to bet that the asparagus in the picture was not done sous vide. Unfortunately, cooking green vegetables sous vide doesn’t create those beautiful “crispy green” results. To get that crispy green result, you need to blanch the vegetable and quickly cool them in ice water. Blanching kills the enzymes that actually turn green vegetables brown and mushy. Cooking sous vide doesn’t so the “crispy green” color is lost. I love my Sous Vide Supreme, but unfortunately, after trying, I don’t do green vegetables in it anymore. On the brighter side, sous vide does do an amazing poached egg! You can check that out on my blog!

SousVide Supreme responds: Good point, Artie. In fact, blanching first is quite helpful to maintaining the vibrant green of asparagus and broccoli, but then vacuum-sealing and cooking sous vide at a somewhat lower temperature than would really tenderize them fully (about 160F/71C) and doing so quickly (about 10 minutes) can yield some pretty amazing results. We should probably update the blog post to reflect that scheme.